Affordable Housing social exclusion issues.

See our housing development grant bidding article in Housing Today 1 August 2003 page 30 . This area of the website started as www.vincentwilmot.com in February 2003 concerned with social housing development financing chiefly, and the GoScheme development for rent Scheme Appraiser for England UK - in Excel, and FREE ! This site also deals with the social housing big picture, including development grant bidding.

In developed countries, social exclusion housing problems generally concern their relative poor who are to a large extent socially disadvantaged non-working or welfare dependent with a significant minority enhancing their low incomes by stealing or fraud. Then the social exclusion housing problems can especially concern large affordable housing renting estates if tenants are largely or entirely such problem households essentially confined in their own excluded sub-society. While any one such household would face problems however housed, they will face greater problems in housing confining them together, as in them then facing reduced information on work opportunities and other positive social choice opportunities and in all the estate's children also facing much more negative options including 'work and school do not matter, and stealing is normal'. This can become extreme if large numbers of anti-social stealing etcetera families are housed in one social housing development. And affordable housing estates
are often seen as being only social inferiors and losers, so that anybody living in them is seen as such and socially excluded because of their housing - so creating real housing estate problems.

Hence social exclusion additional to poverty in affordable housing can be a big problem for renters, especially in large social housing estates which may often be high-rise. But this is likely to also produce significant problems for affordable housing landlords and for the whole of a society, as it will often encourage higher levels of vandalism, drug use, crime and social disorder in socially excluded sub-societies and constitute non-sustainable housing. Of course, such intensified social exclusion problems can also apply to some concentrated private renting as in slum-ghetto areas, and to the unhoused, but social housing landlords certainly need a social inclusion strategy for their large housing estates to reduce social exclusion. Widening the social mix on an estate can help, and also helpful is organising or encouraging group project working on estates. But solutions to this type of problem housing need to involve improving social housing systems and social landlords.

The structure and limited supply of low-income housing often gives low-income renters an added exclusion from a choice of home location and ability to move house, and an inability to move house may prevent getting a job or getting a better job. There are many social exclusion issues, not all in the textbooks. The financing of new housing to help the low-incomed must avoid encouraging new social exclusion housing and should encourage mixed inclusion housing. Hence UK social inclusion housing policies being pushed by government includes more new affordable housing projects having a mix of low-rent, semi-market-rent and subsidised-sale units and UK housing associations are following such policy as part of their sustainable development strategies. However, this has no effect on the many existing large UK social housing estates many being a disaster. The UK replacing welfare for the working low-incomed with Tax Credits should help there somewhat over time, unlike their encouraging high density housing, but governments generally are missing some effective practical social inclusion policies that need cost them little.

The management and policing of big social housing renting estates is often inappropriate, basically taking them as no-go areas, and it also often attracts inappropriate solutions. Some support heavy police presence and/or continuous CCTV camera use, while others oppose both police presence and CCTV cameras as 'police-state' intrusion. But most tenants on such estates favour a practical position of both being always available but with just sufficient police presence when needed and with CCTV cameras to be used only some of the time as needed. On both police and CCTV cameras, the extremes of 100% and 0% are generally not acceptable - the right balanced uses of both are what is often wanted and needed.

Developed countries' social exclusion policies, both by government and by social housing landlords, will hence often need to especially address large low-income housing estates. However, those expected to produce such social inclusion policies will generally be educated professionals with little or no experience of living in social exclusion housing, and they may commonly have correct general theories but often be missing the correct practical detail needed. Consultation with the less educated low-incomed renters themselves is likely to help only to a limited extent, and those dealing with social exclusion housing need to find the tiny handful of street-wise affordable housing professionals who somehow do happen to have substantial experience of themselves living in and raising a family in such low-income housing.

The honest poor in developed countries are generally handled by the non-street-wise middle class running government departments and other bodies. Problems of the honest poor may include having to do with black-and-white TV with few channels - for which the UK charges a mandatory license fee and being late buying that brings criminal prosecution (for being poor and not dishonest ?) - and even having such license they are still harassed with investigation visits 'as possible-evaders of the dearer colour TV license'. The honest poor's children not having expensive passports cannot accept an offer of a free foreign holiday. And poor children's school attendance will often get no realistic support. Developed countries' government departments and other bodies need to make use of the few street-wise professionals who do work for them, but are often not consulted on any of these types of policy issue concerning the poor.

Developing countries generally do not have welfare, but their absolute poor will also include a significant minority engaging in stealing or fraud which can concentrate in some types of housing and help to exasperate social exclusion problems. (see the first link given below)

To contact, (e-mail vincent@social-exclusion-housing.com): .. and we will get back to you asap .. or use the simple enquiry form at Do For You.

NOTE : this site gets Google market advertisements, some of which may be examples of social exclusion at work now !

OR
if you have dire youth/child handling problems then try Youth Change ! (but their large web pages may load slowly)